


be it wood, be it gold

by inoko



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Growing Up, Kageyama Tobio-centric, Self-Discovery, light kghn but it's not romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:53:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26641744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inoko/pseuds/inoko
Summary: Your heart has always been too big for your body.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 26
Kudos: 243





	be it wood, be it gold

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't been very inspired to write lately but i wanted to write about tobio because he's perfect so i repurposed the [giver piece](https://twitter.com/lysihtea/status/1298323751281385473) i posted on twitter a while ago...
> 
> [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4xXaoyVhjS81p5lJ72q8wx?si=Mrrgq6B_TQGBB_3XDfSKmw)

_I feel I can **give** you everything without **giving** myself away, I whispered in your basement bed. If _ _one does one's solitude right, this is the prize._

_Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts_

_―_

_1\. growing up, haphazard freak_

It rains.

Miyagi was built 40 meters above sea level, built from dust and dirt and ash, and it rains. In the spring, in the fall, in the driest of summers. In the winter it snows, almost every day, on every birthday Tobio has ever remembered. There is always precipitation that follows him, always clouds, always dark. Always, it rains.

The precipitation is the same at school as it is outside, heavy, hangs over his head and tells him he’s a loser because he can’t talk right and goes home straight after class and his only friend is his grandpa. Freak, idiot, moron. That’s Tobio.

Miwa tells him it’s normal, to be bullied. That the kids in her class used to call her names, too. He can’t really picture it, with how she is now, how she carries herself and grows her hair long and decides that she wants something other than what she was born into. Tobio wants volleyball, but it’s not like he’s ever known anything else. He wonders if he will outgrow himself, too, if there will be something he wants so bad he chases after it. It seems unlikely.

Tobio is, after all, a giver. A lover. And once he chooses, it is final.

He was brought into the world with a crown on his head and a lump in his throat, with more substance in his own person than can fit comfortably. There is a castle in his soul and a scepter entwined in his fingers, with more, with excess. He feels greedy if he keeps the riches, so he doesn’t.

The first thing he had ever been given in return was the squeak of shoes on waxed hardwood and leather in his grip from a man two generations older than himself, and so it is only natural that he loves this gift the most. It is all he’s ever had.

“Your heart has always been too big for your body,” Miwa says, running nails coated in paint over his scalp, long strokes that are familiar only from her. “It would do you some good to do nice things for yourself, besides sleeping and eating. Do something you love.”

“I love volleyball,” Tobio responds, because it has and always will be true. Miwa laughs.

“I know. But you’re giving, even then,” Tobio thinks she sounds sad, just a little. He wouldn’t be able to tell you why if it was the same jump serve rehearsed to him a thousand times over. “You stupid setter.”

The word is fond, and Miwa is strong. Tobio supposes that she’s probably a giver, too.

_2\. to win or to lose_

Tobio writes a letter to his first crush.

Tobio is eleven years old and there is a boy on his team that he thinks is pretty. He writes this in the letter. He wants to tell this boy about his eyes, how they’re deep and dark and beautiful and he could probably swim in them, if they were how they looked, if Tobio was small enough. He writes this in the letter, too, and doodles a big, elegant pond next to it. He tells the boy about his voice, how it’s rough, just breaking, how it sounds warm. He doesn’t know how a voice can sound warm, and isn’t going to try to explain. He writes this in the letter, and his hands are starting to shake. He tells the boy about his fingers, because he remembers how they’re calloused with hard work, how he wishes he could slip his own between them and not be afraid. He gives the boy his fear and love and hope, by writing it in the letter. Tobio signs his name.

Tobio writes a letter to his first crush and finds it in the trash can when he walks in to practice.

Iwaizumi finds him curled up by the gym mats in the storage closet, buried into his knees, practicing far too late, crying even later. Tobio can feel his sinuses, the inside of his throat, whatever is ringing in his ears. Everything is sore, every limb, every muscle. He has eroded down to tendon and bone and skull, a mountain to a hill. Kage _oka_. Iwaizumi sits down next to him.

“I have to lock up, Kageyama.”

Tobio doesn’t say anything. Iwaizumi sighs.

“What’s up? Would you like to sit outside?”

Tobio tilts his head back to fall on the mats behind his skull and allows his hair to go down with it, out of his eyes. He can barely see, they’re so swollen, and Iwaizumi rises onto his knees, grabs Tobio’s jaw in his hands and pulls it towards him, wipes the tears away like they’re no more than spilled milk. 

“Hey. You’re not alone, kid.” He says, aware by now that Tobio never wants to talk about anything but volleyball, that he’d speak if he had to. Iwaizumi shoves Tobio’s face, red with grief and anger and the very same fear he gave away, into his chest. “No one ever really is.”

Tobio needs to love. It is an insatiable craving, something that fills him to his core, knocks him clean off his feet until he’s soaked in wet mud, his socks are drenched, his ankle broken. He doesn’t know how to tell Iwaizumi that his arms are broken, too, that the tears come from his own decision not to build a dam, that he has lost just about every single person that could render his lonesome worthless. Tobio nods into a gym uniform that he wishes was the boy he liked and pledges to no longer cry in this gym or any.

_3\. from higher places_

Tobio’s grandfather dies two years later. Tobio knew it was coming. The knowledge of a moment before it happens does not make it any easier to digest.

When Tobio was five, he told Kazuyo that if he could only have one superpower, it would be to fly. It’s the most logical answer, of course: beat traffic, go anywhere, be the best volleyball player ever. You’d never have to spend money on planes or trains or cars, and Tobio knew without experience, by default, that everything is more appealing the higher you rise.

The funeral is held in his great-grandparents’ hometown, where they’re buried, and Tobio needs to take a plane. Tobio knows that when he steps out of the terminal there will be flowers and people he’s never met and a suit that chokes him almost as much as the news did. There will be no volleyball to commemorate Kazuyo. Tobio doesn’t know if he would’ve been able to play if there had been. His parents won’t come with him and Miwa. 

His grandfather, the first person to ever believe in him, had died a lone death while Tobio was at home bouncing a ball off the right side of the house, off of bricks that crack easier than any heart but his own.

The airplane is small and cramped and he’s too tall to see out the window. His luggage is slight and he borrows his father’s suit because he doesn’t have his own, never thought he’d have a reason to wear one, not before sports interviews and formal gatherings that adults go to. Food tastes like nothing. Hitting a ball is muscle memory. Tobio’s only friend is about to be buried two meters underground.

Tobio learns that the world looks no different from the atmosphere than it does on the ground, and he will never be able to tell Kazuyo that he wants to change his answer to time travel. 

The funeral happens. He does not see the body. The casket is not open. It is not held in a gym. He does not cry. 

Miwa goes back to university after the service, doesn’t take a plane back to Miyagi with him. _There are only so many days you can take off from higher education_ _no matter the situation or what you study_ , is the last thing she says to Tobio before she makes her way to her own gate. _And for the love of God, Tobio, eat something._

The house is empty when he gets back, dusty with little use, a pot on the stove his parents left over for him to clean up. The air reeks of death and expiration dates, more than the funeral home. The tomato in the fridge is rotting. Tobio should clean, unpack, shower, eat like Miwa told him to. 

He sits on his bed and stares at the ceiling until his stomach turns inside out and he starts contemplating ripping apart the very last ball that Kazuyo ever bought him, because nothing has ever gone _right._ Tobio was born with a crown he never wanted, a fixation that doesn’t go away, and the second thing he has ever been given was heartbreak. He doesn't have anything else to chase after. He doesn't have higher education. He never wants to look at a single piece of equipment for as long as he can help it. 

Tobio picks up the ball he wants to claw to shreds, some feral beast, and goes to the right side of the house, where the bricks lie in rows. He hits it. And hits it. And hits it. And _hits_ it...

_4\. drive right into the sun_

Tobio does not want to allow this to skew his love of volleyball towards bad places. He returns his second gift to the universe, pushes the tears down as far as they go. They are not meant to exist on the zenith, on the horizon. Misery is to be replaced with indifference, despair with passivity, lethargy to suffuse you from your head to your toe.

He does not skip practice, not once, stays behind even later than before. He watches plays on a loop in the silent commotion of his kitchen. He plays game after game, relives the funeral over and over, feels the lethargy fill hungry, bitter, _angry_. 

He no longer has a reason to keep playing. Tobio keeps at it anyway, if only because volleyball is all he has left. His only important memories. The only gift he’s ever wanted from anyone in return.

He can hear the steps of those on either side of him, the call of other animals that beg him to chase after them. He tries to give sooner, to give faster, to give better, for himself, for the win, for Kazuyo, and for a brief second, there is nothing that can stop him at all. 

His school begins to climb to nationals once again, a shoo-in like they always are, and Tobio is vice-captain. His underclassmen think he’s scary, because they couldn’t care less and he couldn’t care more. Kitagawa Daiichi is still tall and strong and fast, like they were when Oikawa was captain, even if they ( _Tobio_ ) are capable of better. They ( _Tobio_ ) play their hardest against everyone. 

Each victory tastes like loss, and he soon trips over the highest peak of gravel and sand and rubble, of dirt and broken dreams and news article headlines.

His teammates need Tobio, but they don’t want him. He demanded the best from them in exchange for his gifts, exactly what he should’ve done, but his words are thorned and water is dry and fire is cold and everything is _wrong_. Nothing has ever been right. He just wants to win. _He just wants to win._

Tobio’s crown shatters, falls, turns from weighted gold into dead wood soaked with the same rainwater that follows him, a curse. The animal’s footprints that used to once line his way forward no longer sink into the mud he tripped on. There is no Kazuyo to follow like a guide. Tobio is benched, and the foliage grows thick and jagged and blocks his view. He loses his way. He has to map the trees to even know where he stands. 

He knows, deep down, that the bleachers at his games will be empty for all of his life.

There are steps, up the road, only one set of footprints left over, of a bird that took to rest his wings. They are small and shapely, and Tobio wishes he knew who they belonged to, so he follows them. They lead him to a gym, one of feathers and dark shadows and a murder of crows, the harbingers of death and misfortune and there, right there—

_5\. home without an address_

Hinata Shouyou is the fourth person in the great big world to love Tobio back.

It isn’t the type of Kazuyo-love or Miwa-love or even Iwaizumi-love, which is built off kind advice or a hug in time of need or homemade food, that Tobio knows, comes to recognize as normal. It isn’t soft or sweet or gentle, isn’t kind, honest. Hinata-love is new. Hinata-love is real. Hinata-love is unconditional.

Hinata yells at him, mocks him, tells him what to do. Hinata calls him an idiot, a coward. Hinata wants to jump for him. He doesn’t just do it because Tobio is there, because Tobio asks. He jumps and hits and demands, all because Tobio _doesn’t_ give, and Hinata knows he _can_.

Hinata punches him square in the jaw when Tobio doesn’t hand him what he wants. He calls Tobio a king, only once, and then never calls him anything but his name (Kageyama, Bateyama, Bakageyama, _‘Yama_ ) again. Hinata tells Tobio that he hates him. Hinata never goes away. Hinata comes close, gets close, gets closer. Hinata is always there and doesn’t leave. Hinata wants Tobio for everything, tosses and trauma and wordless love-languages and all. 

Hinata seethes. Tobio stands. They fight, argue, crack each branch and wield them like deadly weapons. Tobio stands atop his garbage, his baggage of memories gone but not forgotten, and Hinata pulls him down from them. Hinata gets Tobio to set his feet back onto the ground. Once again, Tobio wants to give, but it’s different.

Tobio gives to Hinata when he’s angry, when his face contorts into something just short of fury, when his voice screams words that ring in Tobio’s ears hours after his vocal cords and lungs create them. Tobio wants to tell him no, sometimes, but Hinata just screams back yes, and takes what Tobio would’ve given him anyway.

Tobio gives to Hinata when he’s bashful, for the Hinata that sings like the autumn when he can’t look Tobio in the eye, amber and honey and monarch butterfly, the light breeze that trickles down Tobio’s arms during the rainy springs. For the way he makes Tobio shiver and heats him again, a clay oven warmed with care, when Tobio glances up and catches the tips of Hinata’s ears bright red. Tobio learns the crow’s song better than any other he knew before.

Tobio gives to Hinata when he’s scared, too, when his stomach turns sour and he curls in around his edges and he decides he can’t fly. Tobio always reminds him that his wings cannot spread when he uses them to shield himself from the sun. Hinata soars, then. He takes.

Tobio gives to Hinata when he’s happy, most of all, because that is when the sun reaches its peak in the sky, when he flies the highest, when Tobio feels most free. Tobio pulls him through the trees, on happy days, and he squeezes Tobio’s hand threefold. Tobio likes Hinata when he smiles best. Tobio thinks Hinata looks like a home he only ever had once before, one that was forcibly ripped from his fingers. 

This time, home stays.  
  


_6\. no matter what you’re made of_  
  


Tobio gives, not just to Hinata, but to the people in his new place amongst the murder of crows, to the hitters and the missers and his captain and his benchwarmers. The crows smile at him, and he wonders where the rumors of death and misfortune ever came from.

He sinks to their level so that he can gaze into beady eyes and black beaks of bone and keratin. His knees scrape against the dirt. He worries they won’t trust him when he stands tall and straight and regal, so he sits, feeds them from his hand, and they trust enough to eat from it, the seeds and berries he collects himself.

Hinata does not like this.

He screams, tells Tobio not to back down, tells him to be _Tobio_ , giver and setter and lover all the same. Hinata flies even farther above sea level; higher than Sendai, higher than the clouds that meander after Tobio like a permanent beacon, ignited. 

Hinata drops a new crown, one of twigs and leaves they once fought with, directly through the weather and it lands right on top of Tobio’s head. It is as heavy as his one of gold, but this time it is his own. It was made for him. He wasn’t born with it.

The crows still eat the food Tobio throws to them, still trust him enough to take what he can provide. They gaze up at him where he stands ( _tall_ and _straight_ and _regal_ ), and they don’t back down anymore than he does. They give him shiny things in return for his gifts, and he soon realizes that their footprints had always been there, even when he had a throne of garbage, that their trust has always laid in his hands, no matter his height or his words or his past.

Hinata Shouyou is the fourth person to love Tobio back, and Sugawara Koushi is the fifth. Tanaka Ryuunosuke is the sixth. Sawamura Daichi is the seventh, and Tsukishima Kei is _definitely_ not eighth. Yamaguchi Tadashi is, though, and Ennoshita Chikara is just barely ninth. Kinoshita Hisashi and Narita Kazuhito tie at tenth, and Azumane Asahi follows close behind at eleventh. Nishinoya Yuu is twelfth, lingers after Azumane, and Kiyoko Shimizu is thirteenth. Takeda Ittetsu is fourteenth. Ukai Keishin is fifteenth. Hitoka Yachi is the sixteenth person to love Tobio back, and Hinata Shouyou will always be the fourth.

If Tobio could write a love letter now, with all the new vocabulary he’s learned since he was eleven, it would be a sonnet, a promise to Karasuno, a psalm. He’s still no good with words, however, so he’ll keep tossing, throwing seeds and berries, writing wins down in his notebook. He will express his love to them in the ways he knows best, wordless or long-winded. 

Hinata Shouyou, person number four, will get the longest unspoken poem of them all.

_7\. to take up space_

Tobio is vice-captain again in his third year of high school. His underclassmen still think he's scary. Even then, they trust him. They give him their all. They love him.

_8\. and oh, how i beg you_

Kageyama Tobio has been wandering the earth for longer than he has been alive.

He lived on top of lands that vary in height every day of his life for eighteen years, and he knows what loss is. He knows what it’s like to sit alone at a dining room table and be named a freak. He knows what it’s like for people to walk away.

He carries the weight of everything on his shoulders. Every success, every failure. Every letter thrown in trash cans and every casket he’ll never have to see. He does not know his mother or his father’s favorite color. He does know that eggs are a great source of protein. They are one of the last remaining memories of the only friend he ever made on his own. Miwa watches all his games on her phone. Sugawara hates grape juice. Tanaka has almost gotten run over by his sister twice. Hinata promises that he’ll teach Tobio how to juggle. Underneath the cold exterior, Tsukishima is afraid of many things. Yachi lets Tobio borrow her highlighters, even the ones she’s scared to lose.

Home is what you build with your hands.

Every new step forward from ages thirteen to fifteen was a step on two broken legs. Iwaizumi Hajime has saved Tobio’s life more times than he can count. The best set is one that is easiest for the spiker to hit _and_ helps them reach their full potential. Tobio owes Takeda almost as much as he owes Kazuyo. Not everyone is alone in death. Miwa once told him he was named Tobio because his wings are so dark and so wide that they could cast shadows on the surface of the sun.

The illusion of a paring knife is its significance. Most things in the kitchen can be done with a single cleaver and some chopsticks.

But Tobio is, after all, a giver. A lover. He loves his paring knife and serrated blades. He longs to give himself to anything that will take him. He had asked his whole life if he’d ever be able to receive and only got more taken away from him as an answer. He lost everything. He learned that it does not take a king to walk to hell and back.

Kageyama Tobio loves, even with his crown of branches and greenery and his sullen face and his voice, deep like the dark, vacant sea. There are people that will come to all his future games. They will watch him win gold at the Olympics, once, twice, three times over. They will let him know affection and care that runs solid, liquid, viscous. It is not air that passes through his nose and out his mouth. Forever-oxygen and hugs after a game and bleachers, _bleachers_. Tobio’s bleachers are full.

His crown was gold, stone, garbage, wood. He was born into this life, and he built it from the ground up, 40 meters above sea level. His castle has room for all the people that love him, that he loves in return. His plates are always cleaned. His letters are always read. His foyer is always full.

Kageyama Tobio has been given many gifts, now, by many people, many faces, many things to love. Kazuyo is not the only person to cherish him ( _treasure boy_ ). It rains, sometimes, but this time he just waits for the sun. He knows it will always come out.

He trusts, throws a ball, gives what he has always had too much of, knows that there will always be someone to receive it.

His too-big heart feels just right, to him.

_9\. please stay_

_You’re not alone, kid. No one ever really is._

**Author's Note:**

> i miss him so much
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/lysihtea)


End file.
